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When it comes to crafting their stories with deep and detailed world building, Romantasy authors like Danielle L. Jensen have to do their due diligence and do some research. As it turns out, when you’re writing stories with sword fights and all sorts of drama unfolding, there’s bound to be some characters who give up the ghost. In other words, in Romantasy stories, characters die, and authors like Danielle L. Jensen are here to make sure they die in medically-accurate ways. 

At a panel with other Romantasy authors at New York Comic Con 2024, Jensen shared all the details about her research process. “I Google a lot of information about how to kill people. My search history is a lot of ways to die… I do have a family member who works as a medical investigator, so I frequently ask her questions about, ‘if this happens to a person, what’s it like?’ And there’s a scene in [The] Bridge Kingdom [book 5] where someone falls from a high place. And I asked her, ‘if you fall, do your eyeballs explode?’ And she’s so used to these questions from me. But apparently even in a plane crash, your eyeballs, unless they take a direct hit, are going to be intact.” 

Danielle L. Jensen is the author of books like A Fate Inked In Blood, The Inadequate Heir, and The Bridge Kingdom series. Her writing features a blend of the romance and fantasy genres, hence the Romantasy portmanteau. It’s clear that Jensen’s findings can be helpful to other writers beyond the Romantasy genre. And perhaps all of us eyeball-havers too. 

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